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Wednesday, March 16, 2016

Electrical Appointment

We had our electrical appointment today. Our guide was Elle, she officially works for Argus Technologies who Boutique use for all their electrical work however is contracted out by Boutique for the consultations. She was excellent to deal with. Very knowledgeable, very friendly and the whole experience was a pleasure!

Lighting plan below.

Sorry, I don't have a digital copy yet.

We went into the plan with a $5,000 electrical allowance and $1,800 optic fibre allowance however I knew this wouldn't be enough for what I wanted to do so I planned for a $10,000 budget after the allowance was removed.

For most people what you see above will be overkill however we currently live in a property with a similar LED lighting plan and really love it so we decided to add extra and just place dimmers if we were worried about too much light.

On a side note, Boutique use Beacon lighting as their supplier, so anything that Beacon carry, Boutique can install!

Some of our notable lighting selections are below. Sorry for the excess text. There isn't much to take photos of!

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51 LED 12W cool light down-lights. We could have gotten away with 30 or less however really wanted a bright house. We also upgraded the fittings so they will look a lot better and the globes are also replaceable instead of having to replace the whole fitting. We spent aover $7k on this and it was nearly half our electrical spend.

44 double power points throughout the home. I went in with a plan already drawn up showing where I think we might need or place lamps or other powered items. In the end I would rather a power point I don't use than have the trouble of a space where I should have placed one.

We added 2 under cupboard down-lights to the overhead cabinets in the kitchen.

We have 2 feature up/down lights on the front facade either side of the porch.

Our porch light is linked to a sensor so it turns on as people step onto the porch.

As we have a third garage we have 2 sensor flood lights covering the driveway. We have 3 more on each side of the house and 1 on the back facing the yard.

We added 3 dimmer switch locations throughout the home. Main Bedroom, Living and Alfresco

We have the provision for 3 pendant lights above the kitchen island and 1 in the dining room. Just have to choose the lights now. We are thinking below for the island bench and need ideas for the dining room.

We added 2 power points either side of the main bedroom bed position which have USB charger points already included. This way we have a more slimline way to charge our phones

2 wall mounted feature lights to be installed either side of the ensuite mirror. They look like the below.

Wall mounted feature lights either side of ensuite mirror

We upgrade our smoke detectors to a more slimline look.

We opted for a wired door bell so we don't have to worry about batteries in the future.

We added a sound and entertainment package which includes wall mounted TV, Data, PayTV and HDMI all running to a plate behind where our TVs will be wall mounted. They are recessed into the wall. We have this in the Theater and Living room walls.

We added a Honeywell Alarm system which has 3 motion sensor points. The benefit with the Honeywell system is that in the future we can add home automation in the future. This would include remote powering on and off of lights in connection with the alarm being triggered or just if we want to turn them on. Controlling appliances or cooling from your smart phone etc.

We have added the provision for two fans in the alfresco to be installed after handover. We also added 3 ceiling mounted points in the alfresco. One for our Sonos speaker to play music outside and two for roof mounted heating which will heat the space in winter (similar to what you would see in a Cafe).

We also added TV and Data plates to be installed in the alfresco so we can really create the indoor/outdoor area we are looking for.

We added extra power and the provision for light switches to be available for use with the pool. This included upgrade power box inside the garage to allow for extra circuits to be connected to the home without having to adjust anything in the future.

Lastly, after looking at our electrical plan we have decided to upgrade our home to 3 phase power. This will ensure that the pool, cooling and lighting will all run at the same time with no issues, with room to spare.

In the end we came in at a total of $19,000. After the allowances came off we ended up at $13,000 $3,000 more than I wanted to spend however we still left happy.

Now we just have to wait for the final sign offs for the colour and electrical appointments as we have asked for clarification on a few things. Once that happens we will finalise our pool quote and take all quotes/invoices to our broker for our final loan approval.

We're building next year with Boutique (still waiting for block to title). What stage did you have to work out to get 3 phase power. I've been given a little electrical list from Argus showing what they can do but I can only see they can allow for a 3 phase sub board. Does this mean they'll wire in the 3 phase from the street as well or did you have to organise that separately? Sorry, just a little confused about the process and thought I'd ask someone that's been through it.

During our electrical appointment Argus suggested we go to 3 phase due to how many upgrades we had plus the refrigerated cooling and swimming pool. We agreed as it will also allow for any future extensions etc.

When they connect 3 phase they connect it to the street so you don't have to do anything else. You won't even notice the difference except for your switchboard being slight bigger with more/bigger circuit breakers.